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PEACHY

Photo: Andrea Fazzari

The first summer Tara and I were dating she went to Australia to work for a couple of weeks. It was the middle of winter there, of course, and she came back with a terrible cold and a wicked case of jet lag. When she arrived at my apartment from the airport I gave her some peach sorbet I’d made the night before. She put the first bite in her mouth and got tears in her eyes. “Oh my god,” she said, “you really do love me, don’t you?”

Peaches can do that to a person. To my mind they’re one of the best things about summer, up there with fresh tomatoes, sweet corn, raspberries, ridiculous amounts of basil, and. . . well, you get the idea. They’re churlish travelers, bruising and denting before they’re even ripe, so they’re really only worth getting in high summer from a farmers’ market or farm stand or, best of all, by picking your own. I won’t buy a peach without smelling it at the stem end. If I don’t get a rich, heady waft of summer, I keep looking.

There’s something intensely satisfying about eating a perfectly ripe peach out of hand, preferably outside or standing over a sink, but they’re even better with a hint of something sharp or bitter. The peach sorbet I made Tara (from a recipe in Lindsey Shere’s Chez Panisse Desserts) calls for cracking open a few peach pits and adding the almond-like kernel inside to sugar and peeled, sliced peaches before heating the whole mass gently, whirring it in a blender, and freezing it in an ice cream maker. The kernels lend a hint of nutty bitterness that takes the sorbet from luscious to transcendent.

The contrast need not be obvious to work well. Peach shortcake is a beautiful thing but it gets even better with slivers of lemon verbena folded into the whipped cream and peaches, since the lemony brightness of the herbs neatly balances the sweetness and richness. And peaches marry so well with blueberries, I think, because the latter are a little tart even when they’re perfectly ripe. I’ve been buying blueberries from Phillips Farm like a crack addict and making dish after dish with peaches and blueberries: heaping bowls full with tart yogurt every morning, pie and cobblers for dessert in the evenings. It doesn’t get any better than this.

CORNY, YET AWESOME

Photo: Courtesy of the Corn Palace/City of Mitchell, SD

Never seen the Corn Palace? You’re in for a treat. The annual Corn Palace Festival is kicking off August 22nd, and will run through the 26th. There are two big draws. One, the entertainment, including those old war-horses Night Ranger, Survivor, and Weird Al Yankovich. Even more thrilling, the Festival is the time when they organizers take down the last year’s murals and install the new ones.

“Each year we come up with a new theme,” Corn Palace Director Mark Schilling explained to me. “The theme that’s up there now is ‘Salute To Rodeo,’ and our new theme is ‘Everyday Heroes.’ The new murals show people in the occupations that make a difference in our community, teachers, military personnel, an action-shot of a power-line man, climbing the pole when it’s 20 degrees below zero, trying to fix the electricity so you’re nice and warm at home.”

In corn.

“We have 13 different colors of corn,” Schilling said. “It’s corn that most people refer to as Indian corn or Flint corn, and we have a grower who specially grows corn just for the Corn Palace. We want ears of solid color â??solid blue, solid yellow, solid green.” The decorators (yes, it’s a paid position) start out with a design, by artist Cherie Ramsdell. It looks like a paint-by-numbers diagram, which they then fill in with the corn and other South Dakota-grown grains, like rye and milo (whole grain sorghum).

I had to ask, what about the birds? “The birds do try to eat it,” said Schilling, “But we found with the flint corn, versus standard corn, it’s a harder kernel, so they don’t eat it as much.” It’s not like the birds don’t get a fair shot–the Corn Palace murals stay up year round. Curious? Check out the Corn Palace webcam run by South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

KARA’S CUPCAKES

Kara and Michael Lind, of Kara’s Cupcakes, have had such success at their first location (San Francisco’s Marina district) that they recently opened a second store–in my neighborhood (Ghiradelli Square). Since most of the gang I’d invited over for a recent party were bringing their kids, I decided to skip the fancy desserts and pick up a box of cupcakes instead. A good move all around: Not only did it get me out of the kitchen but the cupcakes were a wild success. We all fought over the Fleur de Sel (a dark chocolate cupcake with caramel filling, ganache frosting, and a fleur de sel topping). Meyer Lemony was almost as popular, followed by creamy Buttermilk Vanilla. The cupcakes were delicious, the decorations over-the-top. I felt downright regal walking into the party with a pedestal piled high with such extravagant shapes and colors.

AT LAST, PATRIOTIC PRIDE AT TABLE

England used to be the laughing stock of Europe, if not the world, when it came to food. As recently as 2005, Jacques Chirac said Britain was the country with the worst food in Europe, after Finland (a comment that, some say, cost Paris the Olympics). On my own travels in China, I would mumble apologetically when asked to talk about the state of eating habits back at home. Everything has changed, however, in the last few years. Super-celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay have won international acclaim, and it’s widely recognized that London is one of the best places in the world for truly global dining.

We all know that. Though, until recently English cooking itself still lagged behind. Now, however, a revival seems to be gaining momentum. Perhaps it began with the gastropubs and their straightforward, seasonal menus, or with Fergus Henderson of St John. But everywhere you look, English food is on the rise. Bookshops are suddenly selling guides to British regional specialties, as well as English cookbooks. Traditional puddings and pies, smoked fish, and roasts are back on the menu. It’s as if, after our long love affair with the honesty and deliciouness of Italian regional cooking, we are realizing that the same principles can be applied to local produce. And this makes me more happy than I can express.